The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the viewer as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Typically, a blockchain is a distributed database that keeps a continuously growing list of data records. Each data record is protected against tampering and revisions. Blockchains are used with public ledgers of transactions, where the record is enforced cryptographically. This invention enables transactions to be private by encrypting the contents of the transaction and only users or entities that have the key to the transaction can view the transaction.
Generally, blockchain technology was developed as a way of providing a publicly transparent and decentralized ledger that is configured to track and store digital transactions in a publicly verifiable, secure, and hardened manner to prevent tampering or revision.
A typical blockchain includes three primary functions: read, write, and validate. For example, a user of the blockchain must have the ability to read the data that resides on the blockchain. A user of the blockchain must also have the ability to write, e.g. append, data to the blockchain. Every write operation starts out as a proposed transaction that is posted on the network. The transaction may be submitted for addition to the blockchain by a user of the blockchain, for example, a wallet application or other application program interface (API). Once submitted, the proposed transaction is added to a pool of available transactions for addition to the blockchain. Validator nodes associated with the blockchain may then select transactions from the pool for addition to a new block.
Data stored on a blockchain can only be safely removed through a fork of the original. While there are proposed solutions, any personal information that was stored on the “old chain” would continue to exist until that blockchain was not supported. The blockchain's immutable nature makes editing, removing, accessing or modifying personal data stored on a blockchain very difficult, if not impossible. More importantly, the inability to remove personal data puts blockchain technology at odds with many privacy laws and principles.
A block generally contains four pieces of information: the non-invertible ‘hash’ of the previous block, a summary of the included transaction, a time stamp, and the Proof of Work that went into creating the secure block. Once information is entered on the blockchain, it is extremely difficult to alter: a blockchain network lacks a centralized point of vulnerability for hackers to exploit and each block includes the previous block's non-invertible ‘hash’ so any attempts to alter any transaction with the blockchain are easily detectable.
Other proposals have involved blockchain security systems and methods. The problem with these security methods is that they do not separate the server from the blockchain; thereby creating security breach issues. Even though the above cited blockchain security systems and methods meet some of the needs of the market, a system and method that creates a secure blockchain to protect data on a blockchain service through a privacy-aware blockchain arbitration server; whereby the method allows for setting authorization policies for each type of data or executable code stored in each block of the blockchain, so as to create privacy; and whereby data is not leaked to unauthorized blockchain participants, i.e. administrator, blockchain server, client, is still desired.